All the numerical options, if not specified otherwise, accept a string
representing a number as input, which may be followed by one of the SI
unit prefixes, for example: ’K’, ’M’, or ’G’.

If ’i’ is appended to the SI unit prefix, the complete prefix will be
interpreted as a unit prefix for binary multiples, which are based on
powers of 1024 instead of powers of 1000. Appending ’B’ to the SI unit
prefix multiplies the value by 8. This allows using, for example:
’KB’, ’MiB’, ’G’ and ’B’ as number suffixes.

Options which do not take arguments are boolean options, and set the
corresponding value to true. They can be set to false by prefixing
the option name with "no". For example using "-nofoo"
will set the boolean option with name "foo" to false.

Some options are applied per-stream, e.g. bitrate or codec. Stream specifiers
are used to precisely specify which stream(s) a given option belongs to.

A stream specifier is a string generally appended to the option name and
separated from it by a colon. E.g. -codec:a:1 ac3 contains the
a:1 stream specifier, which matches the second audio stream. Therefore, it
would select the ac3 codec for the second audio stream.

A stream specifier can match several streams, so that the option is applied to all
of them. E.g. the stream specifier in -b:a 128k matches all audio
streams.

An empty stream specifier matches all streams. For example, -codec copy
or -codec: copy would copy all the streams without reencoding.

Possible forms of stream specifiers are:

stream_index

Matches the stream with this index. E.g. -threads:1 4 would set the
thread count for the second stream to 4.

stream_type[:stream_index]

stream_type is one of following: ’v’ or ’V’ for video, ’a’ for audio, ’s’
for subtitle, ’d’ for data, and ’t’ for attachments. ’v’ matches all video
streams, ’V’ only matches video streams which are not attached pictures, video
thumbnails or cover arts. If stream_index is given, then it matches
stream number stream_index of this type. Otherwise, it matches all
streams of this type.

p:program_id[:stream_index]

If stream_index is given, then it matches the stream with number stream_index
in the program with the id program_id. Otherwise, it matches all streams in the
program.

#stream_id or i:stream_id

Match the stream by stream id (e.g. PID in MPEG-TS container).

m:key[:value]

Matches streams with the metadata tag key having the specified value. If
value is not given, matches streams that contain the given tag with any
value.

u

Matches streams with usable configuration, the codec must be defined and the
essential information such as video dimension or audio sample rate must be present.

Note that in ffmpeg, matching by metadata will only work properly for
input files.

Print detailed information about the decoder named decoder_name. Use the
-decoders option to get a list of all decoders.

encoder=encoder_name

Print detailed information about the encoder named encoder_name. Use the
-encoders option to get a list of all encoders.

demuxer=demuxer_name

Print detailed information about the demuxer named demuxer_name. Use the
-formats option to get a list of all demuxers and muxers.

muxer=muxer_name

Print detailed information about the muxer named muxer_name. Use the
-formats option to get a list of all muxers and demuxers.

filter=filter_name

Print detailed information about the filter name filter_name. Use the
-filters option to get a list of all filters.

-version

Show version.

-formats

Show available formats (including devices).

-demuxers

Show available demuxers.

-muxers

Show available muxers.

-devices

Show available devices.

-codecs

Show all codecs known to libavcodec.

Note that the term ’codec’ is used throughout this documentation as a shortcut
for what is more correctly called a media bitstream format.

-decoders

Show available decoders.

-encoders

Show all available encoders.

-bsfs

Show available bitstream filters.

-protocols

Show available protocols.

-filters

Show available libavfilter filters.

-pix_fmts

Show available pixel formats.

-sample_fmts

Show available sample formats.

-layouts

Show channel names and standard channel layouts.

-colors

Show recognized color names.

-sources device[,opt1=val1[,opt2=val2]...]

Show autodetected sources of the input device.
Some devices may provide system-dependent source names that cannot be autodetected.
The returned list cannot be assumed to be always complete.

ffmpeg -sources pulse,server=192.168.0.4

-sinks device[,opt1=val1[,opt2=val2]...]

Show autodetected sinks of the output device.
Some devices may provide system-dependent sink names that cannot be autodetected.
The returned list cannot be assumed to be always complete.

ffmpeg -sinks pulse,server=192.168.0.4

-loglevel [repeat+]loglevel | -v [repeat+]loglevel

Set the logging level used by the library.
Adding "repeat+" indicates that repeated log output should not be compressed
to the first line and the "Last message repeated n times" line will be
omitted. "repeat" can also be used alone.
If "repeat" is used alone, and with no prior loglevel set, the default
loglevel will be used. If multiple loglevel parameters are given, using
’repeat’ will not change the loglevel.
loglevel is a string or a number containing one of the following values:

‘quiet, -8’

Show nothing at all; be silent.

‘panic, 0’

Only show fatal errors which could lead the process to crash, such as
an assertion failure. This is not currently used for anything.

‘fatal, 8’

Only show fatal errors. These are errors after which the process absolutely
cannot continue.

‘error, 16’

Show all errors, including ones which can be recovered from.

‘warning, 24’

Show all warnings and errors. Any message related to possibly
incorrect or unexpected events will be shown.

‘info, 32’

Show informative messages during processing. This is in addition to
warnings and errors. This is the default value.

‘verbose, 40’

Same as info, except more verbose.

‘debug, 48’

Show everything, including debugging information.

‘trace, 56’

By default the program logs to stderr. If coloring is supported by the
terminal, colors are used to mark errors and warnings. Log coloring
can be disabled setting the environment variable
AV_LOG_FORCE_NOCOLOR or NO_COLOR, or can be forced setting
the environment variable AV_LOG_FORCE_COLOR.
The use of the environment variable NO_COLOR is deprecated and
will be dropped in a future FFmpeg version.

-report

Dump full command line and console output to a file named
program-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.log in the current
directory.
This file can be useful for bug reports.
It also implies -loglevel verbose.

Setting the environment variable FFREPORT to any value has the
same effect. If the value is a ’:’-separated key=value sequence, these
options will affect the report; option values must be escaped if they
contain special characters or the options delimiter ’:’ (see the
“Quoting and escaping” section in the ffmpeg-utils manual).

The following options are recognized:

file

set the file name to use for the report; %p is expanded to the name
of the program, %t is expanded to a timestamp, %% is expanded
to a plain %

level

set the log verbosity level using a numerical value (see -loglevel).

For example, to output a report to a file named ffreport.log
using a log level of 32 (alias for log level info):

FFREPORT=file=ffreport.log:level=32 ffmpeg -i input output

Errors in parsing the environment variable are not fatal, and will not
appear in the report.

-hide_banner

Suppress printing banner.

All FFmpeg tools will normally show a copyright notice, build options
and library versions. This option can be used to suppress printing
this information.

-cpuflags flags (global)

Allows setting and clearing cpu flags. This option is intended
for testing. Do not use it unless you know what you’re doing.

Default value is "video", if video is not present or cannot be played
"rdft" is automatically selected.

You can interactively cycle through the available show modes by
pressing the key w.

-vf filtergraph

Create the filtergraph specified by filtergraph and use it to
filter the video stream.

filtergraph is a description of the filtergraph to apply to
the stream, and must have a single video input and a single video
output. In the filtergraph, the input is associated to the label
in, and the output to the label out. See the
ffmpeg-filters manual for more information about the filtergraph
syntax.

You can specify this parameter multiple times and cycle through the specified
filtergraphs along with the show modes by pressing the key w.

-af filtergraph

filtergraph is a description of the filtergraph to apply to
the input audio.
Use the option "-filters" to show all the available filters (including
sources and sinks).

Set pixel format.
This option has been deprecated in favor of private options, try -pixel_format.

-stats

Print several playback statistics, in particular show the stream
duration, the codec parameters, the current position in the stream and
the audio/video synchronisation drift. It is on by default, to
explicitly disable it you need to specify -nostats.

-fast

Non-spec-compliant optimizations.

-genpts

Generate pts.

-sync type

Set the master clock to audio (type=audio), video
(type=video) or external (type=ext). Default is audio. The
master clock is used to control audio-video synchronization. Most media
players use audio as master clock, but in some cases (streaming or high
quality broadcast) it is necessary to change that. This option is mainly
used for debugging purposes.

-ast audio_stream_specifier

Select the desired audio stream using the given stream specifier. The stream
specifiers are described in the Stream specifiers chapter. If this option
is not specified, the "best" audio stream is selected in the program of the
already selected video stream.

-vst video_stream_specifier

Select the desired video stream using the given stream specifier. The stream
specifiers are described in the Stream specifiers chapter. If this option
is not specified, the "best" video stream is selected.

-sst subtitle_stream_specifier

Select the desired subtitle stream using the given stream specifier. The stream
specifiers are described in the Stream specifiers chapter. If this option
is not specified, the "best" subtitle stream is selected in the program of the
already selected video or audio stream.

-autoexit

Exit when video is done playing.

-exitonkeydown

Exit if any key is pressed.

-exitonmousedown

Exit if any mouse button is pressed.

-codec:media_specifiercodec_name

Force a specific decoder implementation for the stream identified by
media_specifier, which can assume the values a (audio),
v (video), and s subtitle.

-acodec codec_name

Force a specific audio decoder.

-vcodec codec_name

Force a specific video decoder.

-scodec codec_name

Force a specific subtitle decoder.

-autorotate

Automatically rotate the video according to file metadata. Enabled by
default, use -noautorotate to disable it.

-framedrop

Drop video frames if video is out of sync. Enabled by default if the master
clock is not set to video. Use this option to enable frame dropping for all
master clock sources, use -noframedrop to disable it.

-infbuf

Do not limit the input buffer size, read as much data as possible from the
input as soon as possible. Enabled by default for realtime streams, where data
may be dropped if not read in time. Use this option to enable infinite buffers
for all inputs, use -noinfbuf to disable it.

For details about the authorship, see the Git history of the project
(git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg), e.g. by typing the command
git log in the FFmpeg source directory, or browsing the
online repository at http://source.ffmpeg.org.

Maintainers for the specific components are listed in the file
MAINTAINERS in the source code tree.